Spectral Imaging
by SecondXXBanana
Summary: The final moments in the vanishing shop! The crucial moment has arrived and Watanuki has a choice to make. Warning: contains major spoilers for chapters 180 and up. It has a happy ending!


Sniff....Yuuko! *_* This is for you!

Set at the last current chapter of the manga. No swearing or anything- but it's kinda sad.

This is what I think was going on, since answers have yet to be revealed, and there are still some plot-holes left unfilled.

* * *

Black contorted swirls were devouring Yuuko, dragging her away into the darkness. Watanuki pinched himself; this was impossible. Yuuko was omniscient, omnipresent, he refused to believe she would just vanish out of his life. She simply smiled at him and said as much to him as to her self, "My time here....is now over." The writhing mass of black continued to snake up her arm. Watanuki was crying, he didn't even remember when he started crying, but there were tears flowing thick and fast down his face.

He couldn't bear to have Yuuko leave, not when she had left him with so many questions and no answers, when she had taken away his memories and not returned them, and certainly now that she was almost like a mother to him. But she refused to do anything to save herself; she would rather disappear into nothing along with her shop than grant the wish that she stay.

Gravity weighed in on him, the darkness pressing in all around his body until it seemed like he would choke. He was despreate- to do something, anything to make a difference. All he knew was that she couldn't leave, not yet. Watanuki heard himself speak, or shout rather, "I'll wait! I'll wait for you to come back, even if it takes forever I will wait right here!"

* * *

Yuuko closed her eyes with a small smile, feeling a certain sense of deja vu from hearing those words before. They brought up so many conflicting emotions, as knowing the future often did. But in this particular quirk, these words had come from the past. Unwittingly Watanuki was part of a circle in which the past and future had been blended illogically. She kept him from the answers because if he knew the truth, if she had dared to reply to any of those questions.......

_The image of a tall man in flowing black robes, blood, red, black, a cut-off time, and enclosed space, a plan to raise the dead. To raise her. The image of a cold, calculating face and a monocle to cover one eye that just didn't have as good of sight as the right one. Fei Wang Reed bent on a dream, a promise, that he had made so long ago in his past and was being replayed in his present._

She simple couldn't tell Watanuki; he would feel so disgusted. Fei Wang had killed people, used people, and ruined countless lives for his one promise. A promise that she had to break for the sake of two futures. She refused to let Watanuki disappear; she refused to let him become someone else. The crucial moment had come- if she was correct, if she had done her planning well and put her faith in the right person- as if on cue the darkness shuddered. Yuuko looked at Watanuki one last time before the tendrils of death passed over her face. Her lips were still bent in a smile as they too finally vanished.

* * *

Watanuki's face was still covered in tears when a hand broke through the inky black. It wasn't unfriendly he realized, as he could not longer see spirits. They would no longer hunt him. He took the hand, and could feel its human warmth and heartbeat. It pulled him out of the crumbling shop and into the sunlight. Watanuki blinked rapidly as he stared into Doumeki's concerned face.

"Are you alright? You look like you were crying." Watanuki rubbed away the tear tracks, murmuring, "She's gone. And she's not coming back." Doumeki seemed to understand, and took his other hand out of his pocket. In his palm was the egg Yuuko had given him weeks before. "It did come in handy." He said to no one in particular, as he tried to move Watanuki away from the empty lot where the shop had stood.

Watanuki wouldn't move. "I told her I'd wait for her." He said without looking at Doumeki. His posture and his tone said he wouldn't be moving from his spot on the pavement anytime soon.

"Well that was a stupid thing to say," he said bluntly, as Watanuki's head snapped around to scream at him. "You said yourself that she wasn't coming back." Watanuki looked like he wanted to punch him, but stopped as if remembering something. He was thinking about how Yuuko hadn't done anything to stop her fate, and how she refused to save herself. What would she say if she knew he refused to leave this empty place? He looked to Doumeki who was searching his face intently, trying to figure out what to say next. "I don't think she would have wanted you to promise her that." He said slowly, trying to choose words that wouldn't cause Watanuki to come unhinged in the middle of the street. But for a change Watanuki considered his words.

Yuuko had left him behind with one very specific order: Do not disappear. She had tied him to various people like Himawari, Kohane, Zakishi-Warashi, Syaoran, Sakura and a host of others. She wanted him to have friends and people who cared about him, so that he didn't have to live life alone.

Doumeki. He looked at Doumeki again, thinking back to when he screamed at the other boy for no reason, and had tried to make him stay away from him as much as possible. Everytime he was in trouble Doumeki had been there to help him- even if he couldn't see what he was helping Watanuki with.

He smiled, which gave the other boy a mild shock. "Can we come back tomorrow?" He asked quietly. "I'd at least like to give her a proper send-off." Doumeki let out a breath he hadn't know he was holding in. "Yeah, I'll do that." He said, feeling the tension around them ease a little. "Last rights and everything."

Watanuki gave him a small smile before they set out together in the direction of the temple. He would mourn Yuuko; the sadness of losing someone close to you was not something that just ceased. But he had friends and people he loved still with him, and he would always keep Yuuko in his memory.

* * *

Shimmering in the sky, over the empty lot where she spent so much time, the ghostly image of Yuuko smiles. She turns to her companion, a stately looking gentleman with a kind face and a long black ponytail. "Well, he chose as I hoped he would. Befitting, for one of your heirs Clow." The man smiles back at her, with a face full of love. "Yes. If at that moment, Shizuka had not been there to offer a helping hand...." He trails off, looking to the distance. Yuuko pats him on the shoulder, "The moment of truth has passed. I think our work here is done."

The mirages shimmer and are lost in the clouds.

* * *

And that's a wrap!!!

So for those who weren't quite sure what was going on, or those who just want it clarified:

By making that promise the first time around Watanuki became the creep known as Fei Wang Reed. When Syoran halted the universe and Fei Wang moved to his cut-off time Yuuko saw how messed up things got and decided to do them over. The second time she tied Watanuki to various people (IE DOUMEKI) so that they could convince him not to screw everyon over when she gave C! Sakura & Syoran another shot at life. This might sound a little crazy, but some people are thinking that C!Sakura and Syoran become the parents of R! Syoran after the get their do-over, making time come back into a circle and me get off my butt to down four asprins in the course of two hours. -___________- "

The part about the eyes was supposed to be about Watanuki having one eye with poor eyesight, and one of Doumeki's eyes which can see perfectly. (If you've noticed the monocle is on the eye that watanuki has bad vision in.) The whole "Don't disappear" thing would be Yuuko asking Watanuki to not give up being 'Watanuki' and become 'Fei Wang Reed'. Think Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader

PLEASE R+R!!!


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